I am trying to do a better job - or at least as good - at recording Eliane's habits and development as I did with the other two. I'm not quite sure why, since the only time I really look at those records is when going through the same thing with the next baby, and this is my last baby (insert sad face here), but... I can't help myself.
So... Eliane is almost four weeks old and how we are doing sleep at the moment is:
- Mostly she doesn't sleep very well during the day. She's fine on a shoulder, or nursing, but when I put her down, she wakes up within twenty, thirty minutes, mostly. In fact, she'll probably wake up any second now. I don't think this is to do with noise, because it happens when there is no-one else in the house, and I am lying down too. Maybe it's to do with light, or just normal sleep cycles, differentiating the day from the night. Whatever, I'm just grateful it's the day time she's unsettled in!
- Usually though she will get one good sleep in, and if I'm lucky I will have picked that time to lie down with her so I get a nap too. That's not nearly as reliable as it was in the first couple of weeks though, when I was napping at least once every day.
- When I put her down, I am putting her down in a carry-cot passed on by my sister, which is on my bed in the study. I have put her down once in the bassinette in our actual bedroom, but that is so removed from the living part of the house, as soon as the other two started sleeping down there they stopped sleeping through noise, so I'm trying to avoid that. Mind you, most of the time Eliane doesn't sleep that well through noise anyway...
- Having said that about waking up quickly, she still doesn't spend a lot of time awake. She has only very short happy alert times, usually one time a day I might be able to put her down blanket for a while while I do something, but generally most of her awake time is taken up with nursing and nappy changes. Oh, and the obligatory cuddles with Mikaela :)
- I put her down somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30 and usually she sleeps through dinner (which we have at 5:30). Probably she most often sleeps for about 2 hours at this time, so depending on when she goes down, I can usually read to Mikaela before her bedtime (which is 7) and often to Liam before his (which is 7:30). Actually I often do that even if she's awake, but it just depends how settled she is.
- The theory is that I will then feed her around 9 and pass her to Chris to settle while I go to bed, but it often works out that she's already asleep (in the arms of one of us) well before that, so then I sometimes wait until her next wake up and go to bed then (say 10 or even later sometimes). Chris then sits up with her until somewhere between 12 and 2 (or occasionally as late as 3). I think the longest she has slept on him is about 5 hours. She has gone 6 hours between feeds once at this point, but he had to get up and walk around with her to resettle her a couple of times. Usually he sleeps for some time with her on the couch. Meanwhile I am sleeping in our bedroom, next to the kids' room, and so get up to them - usually Mikaela - if necessary.
- He then wakes me up, I feed her, she poos, Chris changes her nappy while I get the study organised, have some yoghurt (I'm always starving at this point) etc. Then I take her to bed in the study. From when Chris wakes me to when I get her down again it takes a minimum of an hour, usually more. Up until maybe a week ago she was tending to poo again and be quite gassy and it would take a couple of hours, but I guess her digestive system is maturing and now mostly that doesn't happen.
During this time I have a lamp on and usually manage to spend a good bit of time reading - I'm working my way through all the books I've bought and been given in the past several years, but failed to read! - but I also have a dim redlight bulb in another lamp which stays on all night, and at the next wake up that's all the light we have. We will work towards having all the night time wake-ups being to only red light, but that depends on having her sleep in the bedroom/study for the early part of the night as well.
- She then sleeps in the carry-cot next to me for 2-3 hours (this morning it was 3 hours 10, and the only reason she - or I - woke up right then was because Mikaela accidently banged the hall door, right next to the study. Who knows how long she would have slept?). She had a phase where she seemed to wake up at 5:30 no matter what (even on the day when I only got her down at 4:40), but the past two or three days she hasn't, yay!
- Then, depending on the time, I often sit up, get her latched on to nurse, then lie down with her, and the two of us dose for an hour or two. Sometimes I have to sit up a few times to reattach her, sometimes I don't. This is really not all that good as she is never very well attached by the time I'm lying down (so not good for my nipples) but at that point I'm too tired to care. On a good night she will nurse for a while and then I will be able to move her aside a little (but still in my arms generally), but sometimes she just nurses on and off for an hour or more.
Until maybe a week ago I couldn't get her latched on properly without the bedside lamp on, and this would end up being another hour or more of sitting up awake time, but now if i lie almost straight back down with her, she usually doses off again pretty quickly. - All these sleeps - day and night - are wrapped, except for on the odd occasion she's slept either in the Maya Wrap or the Hug-a-bub.
- Longest sleep: 5 hours (on Chris).
- Longest sleep in carry cot - I think is about 4 hours.
- Longest sleep in carry-cot in the night - 3 hours, 20 minutes.
All in all, she's doing better than Liam did at this point (he occasionally slept for 3 hours, but generally if he would sleep for 2 hours in the bed, I thought that was good - like her though, he would sleep for much longer on someone/semi-upright). And both better and worse than Mikaela.
At not quite three weeks old, Mikaela was sleeping in the bassinette for all her night-time sleeps, and generally sleeping for 3+ hours for each period. But, she was still taking a couple of hours each time to get back to sleep (okay, so was Eliane often a week ago), and - here's the bad part - sometimes screaming for quite a bit of that time. By about 6 weeks (giv or take) we had figured out that the screaming was caused by 'silent reflux',* which vastely improved when I cut her back to only feeding on one side again, although this also meant that she went back to needing to feed every three hours - so less time between feeds, but without the screaming.
Also, by four weeks old we had about given up trying to put Kaely down to sleep during the day. She would always wake up within twenty minutes. But, unlike Eliane, she would be unsettled for much of the day, and if she was awake for more than about 45 minutes (which she frequently was) she would be crying.
One of the things I am so grateful for with Eliane is that there is very little crying. Some fussing, from time to time, but not much actual crying, except when she's hungry and being denyed her natural right to feed instantly (eg when I am in the shower, or when she wakes up in the night and has to wait for me to drag myself out to the living room). (Touch wood!)
She does feed a lot. As with the other two, I am feeding on demand, and not paying much attention to shedules. So she usually feeds when she wakes up, before she goes back to sleep, and often on and off in between. She doesn't often nurse for twenty minutes in a row, but for five or ten (or two) minutes here and there.
This seems to work for her, but I have to admit, I do sometimes find it frustrating when she seems to want to nurse, then sucks for about two minutes before pulling off, and won't reattach - only to want to nurse again five minutes later. She does seem to get it down the wrong way quite often, and also does seem to need to burp.
With Mikaela, by this time my nipples were so damaged that each time she nursed it was agony getting her on. So I got help from a lactaction consultant (through the Maternal and Child Health nurse program), who referred me to the 'stay in' program where I went and spent four hours at a clinic getting help. It was fabulous, and was where they told me about silent reflux. I don't have any problem with my nipples this time (oh, they may be slightly grazed - mostly from the night time nursing lying down - but nothing much), but I am considering getting a lactation consultant to come anyway, to talk about the on and off nursing thing. I am also finding it much harder to get her well attached now that my breasts aren't engorged - it's okay when they're pretty full, but once she's taken the first part of the feed and come off, it's hard to get her back on again. Hard to get her to open her mouth wide enough. So I'm never really sure if she's just had enough for the moment, or if they are just too floppy for her, or it's coming out too slowly.
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All in all, things seem easier this time around. I think that is partly due to her temperament, and to not (so far) having reflux, which both the other's did. And it is partly due to our experience. Mikaela was easier than Liam, aside from being dreadfully unsettled in the day until she was 15 weeks old, and Eliane seems easier again. But if Liam had been so unsettled during the day as Mikaela was, I think I would have found it much harder to handle. Then again, if Mikeala had slept as badly at night as Liam did, I would have found parenting a four-year-old in the day much harder to handle!
Of course, at the moment I have Chris at home still - he is taking eight weeks off this time - which is heavenly. He mostly does all the morning stuff on school days, including school drop off, takes Kaely to play group, swimming (which is where they are now), shopping, etc. So most days Eliane and I spend at least part of the day at home alone. When I think about the women who have two children eighteen months apart and with very little spousal support in those first crucial weeks (which sadly is a lot of the women I know), I think it's no wonder three kids has become unusual. I could not imagine getting as much joy out of my beautiful newborn if I had to care for another child on my own, much less another virtual baby. And I would have had waaay less sleep in those first two weeks when you really need it.
Okay, well this post has desended in to a sort of rambing of all the things I've been thinking about writing, so I think it's time to stop. Eliane has been asleep in the carry cot for over an hour now (damn, missed my nap opportunity for the day), so it's probably time I had myself some lunch before she wakes up.
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*Silent reflux is where the milk/acid comes back up, but instead of coming all the way out as 'spit up' (or vomit, if you prefer), it come up into the mouth and is re-swallowed.
